Neil,
Whitespace is definitely perplexing, and I am afraid it is doomed always to
be, at least until you get used to the different methods and madnesses of
the way different processors handle it.
It does sound, however, as though yours is a problem best addressed by
separating out the problem of designing the rendering, from implementing
the code that creates the rendering. In other words, first, it is an HTML
problem: figure out what HTML code will work, and then figure out how to
write the XSLT to generate it.
If you could show a code sample (or two) of HTML that you know does the
right thing, post that and some source, and it'll be much clearer how to
get from here to there. Or the problem might just solve itself.
As for whether IE is different from other renderers, the short answer is
that yes there is some fudginess in IE in this particular area (whitespace
handling), but it's only an incidental complication to your problem, not
the problem itself. (You need not only to get the stylesheet working in IE,
you also need to know why it works the way it does, which involves also
knowing what *should* be happening.) In fact, I think you'd do well to
address this outside of IE first -- get the transformation working in Xalan
or Saxon, then move it to IE; if a known conformant processor does one
thing and IE another, the reason for this is likely to be known to some
reader of this list. Knowing whether this disparity between IE and other
processors is actually the root of your issue, however, is impossible
without seeing more specifics of your code.
Cheers,
Wendell
At 01:22 PM 7/26/2003, you wrote:
I never thought something so trivial as whitesapce could be so
perplexing. Are the circumstances I described unique to Internet
Explorer, or would they arise just as seamlessly in other renderings (e.g.
by Xalan)? And of course, any solutions or insights into this problem
would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much.
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